About Cornelia Quackenbosch

Neeltie Quackenbush was born during the 1650s. She was the daughter of Beverwyck pioneers Peter and Maria Quackenbush. As the fourth child of an immigrant family, it is unclear whether she was born in Europe or America.

About 1676, she married Albert Janse Ryckman - a prominent Albany brewer and businessman. Between 1678 and 1692, she gave birth to twelve children. Like her husband, she was a prominent member of the Albany Dutch church and a frequent baptism sponsor.

These Ryckmans lived along the Albany waterfront where their brewery adjoined their home. In 1697, the Ryckman house had ten people living there including four adult men. For several decades, it was a well-known Court Street landmark.

Albert Ryckman made his will in December 1736 and died a few months later. However, Neeltie was not named in that document. Wife and matriarch of the Albany Ryckman family, Cornelia Quackenbush Ryckman died in October 1738 and was buried from the Albany Dutch church.

notes: The life of Cornelia (Neeltie) Quackenbush Ryckman is CAP biography number 2031. This profile is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources. Cornelia receives scant mention in Gail Richard Quackenbush's The Quackenbush Family in America (Wolfe City, TX, 1987), the most comprehensive work on the Quackenbush family.

Place of birth: These Quackenbushes came to America in 1653. Half of their children were born in Holland, the others in New Netherland. Cornelia was a middle child. No one has yet fixed her place of birth. Also, her name was not among the long list of early Albany people who became "naturalized" British subjects during the early 1700s because they had not been born within the British empire. That omission might fuel speculation that she had been born in the Dutch colony of New Netherland.